Psychomotor retardation (PMR) in major depressive disorder can manifest in a range of motor and cognitive functions, such as slowed movement, slowed speech, or reduced facial expressions. In the current project, we investigate whether PMR also affects perception, specifically whether individuals with PMR are less sensitive to differences in the kinematic features of other people’s movements. We use dance as our stimulus because it allows us to minimize the functional and social context, enabling participants to perceive movement primarily through its kinematic properties. We generate point-light displays from motion capture recordings manipulating only velocity and acceleration across matched pairs of choreographic sequences. Depressed participants with and without PMR complete an online discrimination task that measures their sensitivity to dance movement kinematics.

Contact person: Mia Ihaksi (mia.ihaksi@gmail.com)

Point-light display of dance movement kinematics